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URL Rewrite

Works With: IIS 7, IIS 7.5, IIS 8, IIS 8.5, IIS 10

Overview

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IIS URL Rewrite 2.1 enables Web administrators to create powerful rules to implement URLs that are easier for users to remember and easier for search engines to find. By using rule templates, rewrite maps, .NET providers, and other functionality integrated into IIS Manager, Web administrators can easily set up rules to define URL rewriting behavior based on HTTP headers, HTTP response or request headers, IIS server variables, and even complex programmatic rules. In addition, Web administrators can perform redirects, send custom responses, or stop HTTP requests based on the logic expressed in the rewrite rules.

Define powerful rules to transform complex URLs into simple and consistent Web addresses

URL Rewrite allows Web administrators to easily build powerful rules using rewrite providers written in .NET, regular expression pattern matching, and wildcard mapping to examine information in both URLs and other HTTP headers and IIS server variables. Rules can be written to generate URLs that can be easier for users to remember, simple for search engines to index, and allow URLs to follow a consistent and canonical host name format. URL Rewrite further simplifies the rule creation process with support for content rewriting, rule templates, rewrite maps, rule validation, and import of existing mod_rewrite rules.

Easily replace Web application URLs to produce user and search engine friendly results

URL Rewrite permits Web administrators to easily replace the URLs generated by a Web application in the response HTML with a more user friendly and search engine friendly equivalent. Links can be modified in the HTML markup generated by a Web application behind a reverse proxy. URL Rewrite makes things easier for outbound response content and headers rewriting with outbound rewrite rules that work with HTTP request and response headers and with IIS server variables.

Seamless integration with existing IIS features that improve management, performance, and troubleshooting

URL Rewrite is tightly integrated with IIS Manager for better management. In addition, URL Rewrite supports both user-mode and kernel-mode caching for faster performance. URL Rewrite also supports Failed Request Tracing for enhanced troubleshooting of application logic execution.

Features

  • Rules-based URL rewriting engine
  • Rules-based response rewriting engine
  • Support for custom .NET rewrite providers
  • Regular expression pattern matching
  • Wildcard pattern matching
  • Global and distributed rewrite rules
  • Rewriting within the content of specific HTML tags
  • Pre-conditions for outbound rules
  • Access to server variables and HTTP headers
  • Rewriting of server variables and HTTP request headers
  • Rewriting of HTTP response headers
  • Allow list for server variables
  • HtmlEncode function
  • Built-in rule templates
  • Reverse proxy rule template
  • Rule templates for Search Engine Optimization
  • Various rule actions including redirect and request abort
  • Tracking capture groups across rule conditions
  • Logging of rewritten URLs
  • Updated user interface in IIS Manager
  • Integrated user interface for managing rewrite rules and rewrite maps
  • Integrated user interface for importing of Apache mod_rewrite rules
  • Integrated user interface for testing regular expression and wildcard patterns
  • Support for IIS kernel-mode and user-mode output caching
  • Lowercase conversion function
  • Rewrite maps to generate the substitution URL during rewriting
  • Failed Request Tracing support

Awards

Winner, Network Products Guide, Best Product & Services 2009

Download URL Rewrite Module 2.1

Download Extensibility Samples

The extensibility samples provide .NET assemblies and the source code with full implementation of rewrite providers for the three most common use cases: storing of the rewrite or redirect mappings in a SQL database; storing of the rewrite or redirect mappings in a text file; storing of the lookup substrings in a text file.

Download Samples